Posted by Anonymous on 2019/01/17 under Love So you already know that I would like nothing more than to be able to spend a week or more just doing some body cartography. Discovering every part of you and making myself a map to keep and unfold. but I can't. Or I can but I won't. and I know that if I said the word you would break out your moral compass and ignore what we both think is the decent thing to do and just throw ourselves into whatever came next and I had convinced myself it was fine, there was no real chance of seeing you again and you had deleted my number I had deleted yours (although I like numbers with a good rhythm so I remembered yours – or maybe I wanted to remember it and just told myself the number thing was why. Or both. yeah, it's both) and f*** you smell good and I keep trying to NOT remember the things you said it's not what movies and books and songs and my teenage conversations taught me is supposed to be sexy but it made my pupils swallow my eyes and I absolutely f***ing burned to go home with you and we both manage to leave and go our own ways home. And we message each other and realise there is no way we can stay in contact and it be easy to be the people we want to be. You know, people that don't f*** over people they care about. those people, the people we both always assumed we were. So I message to say I will delete your number (and I don't know if that was the right thing to do but it felt like you were owed it and tbh, nothing in this feels exactly "right") and you, despite being frustrated and maybe even angry respond well and sweetly and agree and f***, that makes it all the harder to not think of you because I know and you know if we had met some other when we would have just let whatever this is burn its way through our lives. and a few months have gone by and it's all dulled to a background murmur and I am out with my friend who saw us meet each other for the first time and knew that we had this intense chemistry. so talking with my friend and somehow you come up and we are chatting then I turn around and for f***ing f***'s sake you are right there! and no there isn't but yes there is. because if you don't have anything inflammable you don't care what you put next to a candle, but you were worried for a reason and we caught fire again. and I felt like I was a freaking sorceress or something that just saying your name had sunmoned you to my side and then we each had about a thousand chances to just say good to see you again and bye and each time we accidentally made eye contact it was like super glue and we needed something outside of us to dissolve the adhesive and it didn't work and every second comment was about how one or other of us should go and then those silences where we both agreed but also both were too f***ing excited to be sitting near each other to leave And every so often hidden in the noise of the pub one of us would whisper and set off an explosive. tiny whispers about what we had remembered or forgotten or wished we could do and then back to the discussion about chai. and then everyone starts peeling off, going back to their homes because it is late, already so, so late and the last of us (and then there were three) are splitting up at an intersection with you and I left alone or left as two or whatever the f***. and you are going left and I am going right and there is a wistful comment about you wanting me to come home with you but knowing I can't kissing in the shadows on wide steps and drowing in it all and then when we pause and realise its like we are f***ing fifteen again (and I was never that kind of fifteen I was the kind of fifteen that re-read old novels and tried to figure out which slang from the nineteen twenties I could try and use in real life) and I refuse your offer of walking me to find a taxicab because we both know that would mean another detour where we stopped and didn't f*** but did f*** until we get so close we go well what the hell, we got so close it's as though we did so we may as well f*** so I go home and you go home and it's okay because I can't message you because you knew I deleted your number. and that isn't fair because I don't even know you – its just that fizzing feeling of wanting, want, want, wanting to know you. Wanting to touch you wanting to discover you. That body cartography again and wanting to unfold the map of me for you. So it turns out its easy to be faithful as long as I don't meet someone I am actually attracted to. and listen, don't worry So yesterday when you messaged me to apologise I was f***ing rocked sideways and I replied that you didn't have to apologise, I am an adult (and I am a b**** but I can't lie to myself that it was in anyway your fault, I liked being swept up in it and I wanted to feel that excitement and I was too f***ing selfish to walk before it started to blur the edges of wha's okay and what's not) because now its even harder work to not contact you – before we didn't offically have each other's numbers and we weren't going to run into each other so I could just carry the f*** on, but now I have to NOT reply again. I have to NOT go to that pub when you might be there and now to be a good person I have to actually do something its f***ing work. I choose to give the better parts of me to my life and I choose to not f*** over my favourite person and I choose to not try and "accidentally" run into you or to reply to just clear things up or any other self deceiving bulls***. but my god, I still want to kiss you exactly how you want to be kissed and I still want see if the skin behind your ear is as soft and delicate as it looks and this making good choices thing hurts
like for f***ing real man do you know what it does to you being told "god it's amazing to be kissed exactly the way you want to be kissed"
and I have imagined how it would be if I saw you because it's a small world and a small city and I feel like we are tuned to the same station so it felt like it might happen and then it turns out you are worried about the awkwardness and whether to say hi and you had dithered but then decided f*** it just say hey, nothing wrong with that?
I mean even though we weren't touching (at first) it was thrilling to be near each other and it doesn't often happen that you both know exactly where each other's bodies are at all times. Your hand on your leg was only seven fingertips away from mine
and we are stretched out with sadness and with yearning and we both lie to ourselves that one goodnight and goodbye kiss can't matter (and its fine right? we each deleted the other's number months ago. when we woke in the clear morning light knowing that we cant be people who have an affair, just thats not who we are)
but one kiss can't do much, can it? and no, it can't, but its not just one kiss its the first time we met and its the first kiss we had then and later knew was waaaaay more than we were prepared for and it was the months of knowing how much we wanted to see each other or talk or f*** or just hold hands and lightly trace the shape of each other's little finger as we talked to other people and feeling like we were together inside the same bubble and it wasn't just one kiss because kisses are never just one kiss – there were tiny little kisses in between that "one" and hands on the back of necks or my knee nosing it's way between your legs and your breath hot in my ear telling me how much you like the curve of my throat or each of us pulling away from the kiss at the same time to sigh the same sigh and then you not going left and me not going right but crossing the road to go straight ahead and then there we are
and I remember your number
but I know its okay because we won't see each other again
and it was just a weird coincidence that we were at the same place this time. It doesn't make it anything more
and what would I say, anyway?
basically that I wished I could f*** you. F*** you so often and in so many ways that I could f*** the danger away but I can't because you are the danger and the danger is me wanting you and if something happens that makes me fleetingly think that my husband isn't perfect that I can compare him to you.
It's gonna be fine. Because I already know that I am a b****. People think I am a nice person because everyday I work so hard at it. Because I know that if I decided to ignore the rules that I am ruthless. The same things that make people think I am nice (good listener, patient, remembering details about people's lives, a curiosity about motivation and a creative mind) could easily be used against anyone and everyone. And I could leave ashes and ruin in my wake if I simply decided to rules don't matter anymore
and I said I thought you had deleted my number. You already knew I still remembered yours. And you told me you had deleted my message but had "forgotten" to delete your number. And that you would replay that night in your head
and it made part of me light up and it made all of me exhausted
Its like I am in that movie Brief Encounter, but it isn't romantic and it isn't wartime and they didn't touch each other the way we did sonthey can sit on their moral high horse and there is no win because my poor husband doesn't know just how close I am to f***ing him over or how badly I have already f***ed him over. so that being a good person thing I have already failed at
but, today I get to decide.